Consider
Book

Consider

Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organization

Daniel Patrick Forrester
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
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Editorial Rating

7

Recommendation

Management consultant Daniel Patrick Forrester demonstrates that if you take time to think, you’ll generate better results. He presents accounts of top performers in fields as intense and varied as armed conflict and disaster relief to show why you must find the time to reflect. Forrester demonstrates how to carve out minutes, hours and weeks to consider profound, necessary questions. getAbstract recommends his reflections to those who must solve tough problems, reshape organizational cultures or just take a moment to think.

Summary

The Pressure to Act Versus the Need to Think

The information explosion defines contemporary society and modern life. To bring it down to a personal level, it means that you’re working longer hours and suffering “data overload.” You’re more connected, but you find it harder to sift all this information for meaning. On a societal plane, finding workable solutions to crises like the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil-exploration platform in the Gulf of Mexico demands both useful reactions and considerable thought. When crises or problems occur in your work and life, the situation is parallel. You must react to solve some dilemma blowing up around you, but you really need to think it out – and you just don’t have the time. Instead, you continually swap “attention, distraction, data and meaning.” You rarely get the chance to ask if you’re making the right tradeoffs.

This environment breeds the “bias toward action” that business thinkers once saw as a good thing. But compressed into a tight time frame without reflection, the urge to act can turn dark and dangerous. To assess the constantly rising demands on your energies, taking time to think is necessary on...

About the Author

Daniel Patrick Forrester is a management consultant for organizations ranging from Verizon to AARP and the US Marines. He’s a director at Sapient Government Services.

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